My favorite theory is that since men tend to be older than women when they get married, and each year more and more jewish babies are born, the pool of prospective partners is smaller for women of any given age than it is for men.

Tempo, the way I think of it, is one single predetermined set of actions. It's the time from when you decide to do that action or those actions(or at least start) to when you're ready to do another. It's not how long it takes to perform that action, it's the time in which you're committed to that action and can't perform another.

As an example, let's consider someone taking six-circle six. Is it one tempo or two? Well, it could be either, but I submit that there will be a noticeable difference between the two. "Make it one tempo" means do both then see where that gets you. "Make it two tempos" means take six, then take six again if you think it's right.

And I think this is a useful idea to think about, that fencing is a series of decisions, that isn't covered by "delay your extension."

From here, it's an easy enough jump to the musical analogy. Each tempo, or decision, is a beat. Each component action is a half beat, or quarter beat, depending on how far down you want to drill(advance in advance lunge, front-foot step in advance, etc). That gives you beats per minute, and I don't think it's surprising that fencers extended the idea of "tempo" to cover that as well. In music, you want to follow the timing as closely as possible. In fencing, if you can find your opponent's rhythm, you can interrupt it. That gives us senses 1 and 2 from your definition. I've never heard three, and four is, well, what it is. Synergy has a real meaning, too.

I've got really bad adhd and that makes it difficult to meet people at e.g. singles events(and the ones around here basically cater to the nonreligious), and I don't really want to do shidduch dating. I figure if I hang around long enough, someone will express interest and we'll go from there. It's worked in the past.